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6th October 2017

Thank you very much for the privilege of presenting this dinner address at the ABC Friends’ first national public conference.

It is a very important gathering in both its timing and in the issues discussed. I understand a delegation will be meeting with the Chairman on Monday to take him through the key findings.

It is very apt that the underlying theme for this conference is “Democracy demands diversity”. My address tonight maintains there is no media and cultural diversity without the ABC and democracy would be very much the poorer in the absence of the national broadcaster.

From its creation in 1932, the ABC has been a key element of a very durable media system in Australia. It is a system envied in other parts of the globe. It has, at its heart, a national broadcaster funded by the community and independent of government, sitting alongside commercial media companies.

The dual system delivers a rich array of choice for all citizens: from live sport to ad-free kids’ programs; from reality TV franchises through to hard-hitting investigative stories. The commercials deliver for their shareholders; the ABC for the citizens of Australia. We provide the trusted national voice, the investment in and dedication to the far-flung parts of the country and the ability to bring the nation together at times of celebration and of sorrow.

This system, and the pivotal role of the ABC within it, has strong public support. We know it because every year we use an independent polling company to assess how the community feels about the ABC, its place within a broader media landscape, and its performance across the various Charter remits. Each year there is a consistent message from the public: a resounding endorsement for the ABC and its programming.

It is somewhat perverse that while technology has given us a sea of content abundance – no borders, an endless stream of new content producers, distribution platforms and devices – diversity is being threatened.

Why? We know about the tectonic shifts taking place in the media sector as a result of digital disruption. In Australia, it has provoked some interesting industry and political responses channelled into the Media Reform Bill about to be passed by Federal Parliament.

The ABC acknowledges the need to update some aspects of the Broadcasting Act to account for new platforms and new competition. But no one is pretending that the changes in ownership laws, resulting from exhaustive and convoluted cross-trading with various senate voting blocs, will add to media diversity. It will, in fact, achieve the reverse.

The objective behind the changes, clearly stated by media CEOs, is to allow existing players to build scale through mergers and acquisitions to compete with the new global giants like Google, Facebook and Netflix. I wish them luck: a viable local commercial sector is also important to diversity. But as a former Google executive, I question whether consolidating the number of local players to build size is the panacea the CEOs are proclaiming it to be.

The combined worth of the three major commercial free-to-airs is about $Aust 2.1 billion. Southern Cross and Prime add another $1 billion. Fairfax has a market cap of about $2.2 billion.

In stark contrast, Facebook has a market cap of $US 500 billion; Alphabet, the Google parent, an even higher $US 660 billion and Netflix, that rising upstart, is now valued at over $US 70 billion.

The ABC’s role in the media law reform debate was supposed to be as an interested bystander. We had no skin in the game. Or so we thought. We now find ourselves very much impacted by the deal-making and with a real need to ensure that the public interest – as opposed to vested interest – is protected. Diversity on one side is shrinking. While on the other side, the role and ability of the ABC to provide real choice and a vital public good is being assailed.

You are all aware that legislation will be introduced into Parliament in the next few weeks seeking numerous changes to the ABC Act. Ultimately, it is up to Parliament to determine the fate of those amendments.

However, the ABC position is clear. The proposed changes do not further the public interest. They do not “improve” the ABC as some have suggested. They interfere with the right and ability of the ABC Board to do its work and override the Privacy Act to force salary disclosures on our employees that no other public agency is required to do.

There is no pressing need to change the ABC Act and its Charter, no matter how much commercial CEOs and their compliant media outlets argue otherwise. The public understand and support the ABC’s remit, knowing that it provides the quality, independence and commercial-free space that they want. There is no evidence that the Charter is impacting on the commercial models of existing local companies. Assertions that the ABC is abusing the Charter or exploiting its confines are just plain wrong. They are hurled at the ABC by executives and media commentators who are simply looking for scapegoats for their own woes in a disrupted landscape.

I refer them to the comments of a former Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. The Prime Minister, who has some expertise in the economics of the media sector, has consistently pointed out that these media companies are reaching more people than ever before, using new digital platforms to add to their existing distribution channels. Their challenge is monetising those audiences. The ABC is not after their advertising revenue. As Mr Turnbull remarked at the relaunch of the ABC Parliamentary Friends Association in 2014, while Fairfax and News Corp may have many problems in this new landscape, the ABC is not the cause of them.

I would say the same for the commercial free-to-airs and to Foxtel, whose CEOs seem to spend more time whingeing about the ABC than addressing their own audience challenges. My advice to them is that attacking the national broadcaster does not – and will never – constitute a viable business model. Restricting the ABC’s right to use digital platforms, which appears to be the clear intent behind pressuring the Government for a competitive neutrality inquiry, will not protect them from digital disruption. All it does is hurt the community. Should your children and grandchildren be denied the right to watch Play School and Peppa Pig on an iPad because Hugh Marks, Michael Miller and Paul Anderson are finding life tough? Should the ABC be forced, as they have asserted, into a pure market failure role; simply doing the things the commercials don’t want to do, or can’t? Absolutely not!

The ABC Act and Charter should not be tampered with simply to suit political or commercial agendas. I go further in relation to the proposed changes to the ABC Act likely to be introduced into Parliament in the next few weeks. Legislation designed to further a political vendetta by one party uncomfortable with being scrutinised by our investigative programs is not good policy-making. Neither is using the ABC Act as a bargaining chip in industry machinations that have nothing to do with the national broadcaster.

The ABC doesn’t need more bureaucracy to serve its rural and regional audiences. It knows that the third of the population living outside the capital cities regard the national broadcaster as life-blood. It is why we have invested an extra $15 million a year in creating 80 new content-making jobs across the country at a time when other media companies are cutting staff. More red tape that the ABC is forced to underwrite simply reduces our investment in the primary mission – providing quality, trusted content to the households of Australia.

It is fair to say that relations between the ABC and the Friends have waxed and waned over time. We don’t always agree on strategy or outcomes. While I have always appreciated the passion that the Friends have for our programming, sometimes I chafe at the assertion that everything should remain as it was and that problems will always be solved by getting more money out of Canberra.

I think it is good that the Friends have developed their own statement of principles which anchors their position. It enables us to approach dialogue with clear and transparent positions on both sides. I will come back to the principles shortly, but I first want to address the issue of ABC strategy.

I have one overarching ambition and I have stated it consistently since I started nearly 18 months ago. That is, to make the ABC as relevant (or more so) to my children and their children. While the Act and Charter provide continuity, relevance cannot be guaranteed. As history has shown, the ABC must constantly adapt to technology, to audience trends, to funding pressures, to ensure it delivers for all Australians. What I want is to maintain the role of the ABC as Australia’s most important cultural institution: to link the past, the present and the future. And in a year in which the ABC has lost two of its most treasured identities, to ensure that we create an appropriate legacy for people like Mark Colvin and John Clarke, who have contributed so much to our national discourse.

The Investing in Audiences strategy I announced in March is very much part of building that legacy. It is about putting the audience first, making the necessary efficiencies in our support operations to maximise our investment in programming and services. We have unlocked $50 million a year which we are ploughing back into regional jobs and our content reinvestment fund, the Great Ideas Grant.

I note that your panels today have addressed many of the key issues that the ABC Board and management are grappling with. One is to do with the fundamental challenge of stretching resources to service both traditional and new audiences. There is no binary path here. We simply have to do both. Many of our audiences have migrated across to new digital platforms. Others dip between them. Still others, by choice or necessity, remain with our core radio and television services. There may be a day when digital delivery overtakes the poles and wires, but it won’t be for a considerable time. That means doing what the BBC describes as that very difficult and uncomfortable act of trying to ride two horses at once.

That means trying to find the right balance between the many competing priorities. It means making constant choices about programming strategy and digital investment to deliver the best result for our many audiences.

We saw this yesterday with the announcement by ABC News to substantially increase their investment in public interest journalism – an investment in both diversity and in democracy. We know that commercial newsrooms around the country are being shuttered, networked or stripped back. We know that it is hard to find commercial models that sustain investigative journalism and specialised reporting that is important and relevant to local communities. We know that the ABC has a heavy responsibility, via its Charter, to fill that gap; providing news and information that serves the interest of the public.

Our response is to create the largest dedicated investigative and specialist journalism teams in the country. The funding for this is coming from judicious changes. Yes, Lateline is finishing, but we will continue to provide late evening current affairs on the main channel and our ABC News Channel. I am very excited by the introduction of a new prime-time discussion show to be hosted by Stan Grant at 9pm. It will have a strong international flavour given Stan’s new role as the ABC’s Chief Asia Correspondent.

These are dynamic changes responding to real challenges. For those who focus only on Lateline, I say look at the ABC’s commitment to the core mission of investigative journalism, not on the brand label. Too often, our stakeholders, and I include some of our journalists in that category, get trapped in the mystique of programs, seeing their longevity as trench lines in a “war” against management. They could not be more wrong. As a former distinguished ABC News Director, Max Uechtritz, remarked yesterday: “Great ABC journalism doesn’t die with a program name.” Lateline has had a proud 28-year history, based on its then innovative use of satellite technology. But technology and audiences have changed. So must the ABC.

Catalyst is a good example of how the ABC has reinvented a long running program, giving it new energy and purpose, and our audiences have reaped the rewards. I recall at the time we announced the change it was pilloried as “dumbing down” science and walking away from our Charter obligations. The reality is the reverse. Catalyst has introduced the audience to new scientists and provided compelling viewing on topics as diverse as the miracles of the heart and the dawn of the driverless car. The audience has embraced the innovative approach and its connection to the core mission of the program.

More change is coming. In March, I foreshadowed that we would be reorganising our content divisions to adapt to the shifts in the media sector. Audiences are shifting in their viewing and listening behaviours, they are embracing mobile and catch-up. We need to empower our content makers to respond to these trends, enabling them to work more collaboratively and to use their skills and resources to better connect with the community. We have been working closely with our content makers on these changes. We expect to make announcements within the next few months as we prepare for 2018.

I repeat what I said in March. Restructuring is not about cost-cutting. It does not involve program cuts. We will not be shutting down networks, no matter how much some critics claim otherwise. We are doing what every media organisation is doing – adapting to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. Which I should point out, given it is in the title of the conference, is rapidly approaching the end of its second decade. Twenty years ago, there was no Wikipedia, Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, or iPhone. Imagine what the world will look like in another 20 years.

Twenty years ago, there actually was a Netflix, although it was then nothing more than a humble DVD sales and rental company. Talk about a digital transformation! Netflix has loomed large at this conference; just as it has across the whole media sector. Let me state that I am not among those who see Netflix as one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, laying waste to the local industry. The fact that more than 30 per cent of the population has signed up to the streaming service in Australia in just two years (I note that it took Foxtel 20 years to get to that figure) suggests that it is meeting a demand here. Netflix has added to competition and to media diversity.

Moreover, it isn’t going away, no matter how much Hugh Marks and company rail against it. I have no problems doing deals with Netflix, as we have done with Glitch and with the exciting series now going into production called Pine Gap. Incidentally, the six-part series will be filmed next year in South Australia and the Northern Territory, providing a much-needed boost to the local creative economies. The financing that Netflix supplies enables us to create world-class programming without having to make upfront investments that would drain our entire drama budget.

I note that Netflix has only just announced a $US 400 million Canadian production venture that will, in the words of the Canadian Government, “support Canadian creators, producers and Canadian creative work and bring that work to millions of viewers around the world.”

The ABC needs to make more local content and – given the complex economics of television production – will need lots of creative partnerships to deliver it. Investing in local storytelling is part of our charter remit. It is also what makes us distinctive. The arrival of Netflix and other global giants on our doorstep is a wake-up call to the local industry and to the regulators. Investing in good storytelling is what will enable the ABC to maintain relevance in this new global marketplace. My Director of Television, David Anderson, is currently working on a plan to significantly increase our Australian production across all key genres. I look forward to providing more detail on those plans shortly.

I have traversed a lot of detail in this speech. There is much we have accomplished and much more to be done in delivering our strategy and Charter objectives. Before I close, though, I would like to run a check on ABC performance against the principles set down by the Friends. It is a good way of benchmarking our strategy and our progress.

The first principle relates to the transparency of the Board and management decision-making. We get a lot of flak over this but I think much of it is unwarranted. The ABC is more accountable than any other media organisation. We use a range of instruments – the Annual Report, parliamentary submissions, Senate Estimates and my internal and external speeches to provide details of our strategy and performance. In that vein, I am announcing today that next February the ABC will hold its first Annual Public Meeting. This will provide an opportunity for the ABC’s “shareholders”, the community to hear from the Chairman and me and to ask questions about our strategy and achievements. More details will be provided later but I am very excited by this initiative, conceived by our Chair, Justin Milne.

The principles refer to the Charter remit to “present an independent, professional and authoritative journalistic voice in its news coverage, current affairs reporting, documentaries, and in its range of specialist programs”. I would put a big tick against that, noting yesterday’s announcement of new investment in investigative journalism and in specialist reporting, on top of the outstanding work done by Four Corners each week. Needless to say, no one but the ABC could produce programs of the quality or creativity of Catalyst, Q&A or War on Waste.

The principles refer to a Charter responsibility to provide quality, innovative and diverse programming on radio, on television and digitally. My response? Only the ABC can deliver Gruen, You Can’t Ask That, The Conversation Hour, Landline, and Life Matters.

Your principles refer to the obligation on the ABC to report authoritatively on international issues and news, while promoting Australia’s ‘story’ to the Asian and Pacific region. Again, another big tick. I don’t think we have the time or the inclination to reflect on the long, sorry history of the Australia Network and the ABC’s efforts to build something out of the ashes. But what I can tell you is that the ABC Board recently signed off on a new international strategy built on showcasing the best of our content for audiences, particularly those in Asia and the Pacific.

The ABC will invest new money, including savings from the closure of the shortwave transmitters, in building programming and services that connect with our main Charter audiences. We are still working through the rights issues, but the ambition is to have our best programs streamed to Asia and the rest of the world via iview and the ABC app. We will talk more on this in early 2018. And in the Pacific, we are already bolstering our news services, investing in local journalism and expanding Pacific Beat. The mission is to take the ABC global, seizing the opportunities of technology and the demand that exists for our unique, trusted and distinctive content and services.

We are developing a new education strategy, using the Adelaide base of Behind the News to springboard a multi-platform approach to this important Charter remit. And in relation to the arts and other key genres, we will use the content restructure to ensure that we have the resources and the cross-divisional collaboration in place for a significantly better audience experience.

I will conclude by noting the final principle. It states, “that the ABC’s prime objective is to set the ‘gold standard’ for ethical, quality, specialist and diverse broadcasting nationally in the interests of informing, entertaining and stimulating our robust Australian democratic way of life”.

No arguments there. I believe that under my leadership and the strategic direction of the ABC Board, the Corporation is very much committed to delivering the gold standard.

As the Chairman stated in his Parliamentary Showcase address in August, amid these challenging times of fake news and fragmenting markets, “the one incontestable fact is that now, more than ever, the nation needs a strong, independent and trustworthy public broadcaster”. An ABC that delivers for diversity and for democracy.

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